Resources

There have been rapid technological developments and the scale of data sharing and collection has increased dramatically. Intelligent technology allows private and state use of personal data on an unprecedented scale. There is a wide variation in national implementation of Directive 95/46/EC, and a need to do away with legal uncertainty and current costly fragmentation.

The next six years marks out the most ambitious period of change since the Judicature Acts of the 1870s. The aim that the Lord Chief Justice and I have agreed with the Lord Chancellor is quite simply to strengthen the rule of law. The reform programme that was announced this last month is a breathtaking £1bn investment project.

The number and diversity of JR cases is now such that a review of the year can only hope to cover a small sample of the Administrative Court’s workload. The selection of cases here (from September 2015 to August 2016) necessarily reflects our personal choice, and no doubt there are many others that could have been included. We have each picked three cases. They are summarised in chronological order.

There was so much background reading and watching referenced in our 'By Public Demand! Inquiries, Investigations and the Law' conference on 21st April 2016 that we asked contributors to recommend follow up reading and watching.

This presentation looks at the core duties to investigate, identify, and protect; the source of those duties; and their application in situations where the police and the Home Office are most likely to come into contact with victims - enforcement action, immigration crime raids, police stations, prisons, detention centres, screening, immigration procedures, and visa posts.

In the last 20 years or so Parliament has provided a rash of purportedly civil remedies to address various types of nuisance or anti-social behaviour. This began with housing ASB injunctions under the Housing Act 1996 which were significantly extended by the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003, the ASBO of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 which whilst originally a stand alone civil remedy became most used after sentencing from criminal offences that constituted such behaviour, to follow have been gang related violence (and now drug dealing) injunctions and there have been or are a number of others such as football banning orders.

This paper considers the opportunities for legal redress under the Human Rights Act 1998 (“HRA”) where police fail to carry out their investigative responsibilities. The main focus is on the claims available to victims of serious crimes against the person. However, I also examine briefly the position of those accused of crimes who experience delay in their exoneration as a result of incompetent investigation.

Mid-Staffordshire, Morecambe Bay, Winterbourne View, Southern Health. Sadly the NHS is far from immune from preventable deaths, individual and systemic abuse, and deficient investigations into its own failings. The need for effective systems that will prevent death and serious harm, protective duties that require staff to take operational measures to protect those in their care, and robust, searching investigations into deaths and incidents of mistreatment are needed in healthcare and clinical settings now more than ever.

The “duty” on the State to conduct an investigation into events of significant public concern or interest is not in fact a single duty, but incorporates some duties, and a wide range of powers, derived from common law, statutory and international law sources, which can often overlap in the same case. This is one of two papers by Henrietta Hill QC and Adam Straw presented as part of PLP's 'By Public Demand: Inquiries, Investigations and the Law confercne in April 2016.